Passport crisis: a measure of crass incompetence 

A PASSPORT is a basic right for every citizen. It is the document that guarantees the constitutional right to freedom of movement, unless there are justifiable limitations of limiting such a right, such as when a person commits crime and is barred from travelling abroad. 

For countries with no economic prospects for their citizens such as Lesotho, a passport becomes even more indispensable. 

It is common cause that tens of thousands of Basotho, either literate, semiliterate or wholly illiterate, are working in foreign lands, especially South Africa, because of lack of opportunities at home.   

Their remittances back home have become a source of wealth, not only for the families back home but for the country. 

According to the World Bank’s development indicators compiled from officially recognised sources, personal remittances received in Lesotho accounted for 24.12 % of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2023. 

All that underscores the importance of enabling freedom of movement to citizens, particularly to the foreign lands enabling them a living which they cannot get at home. 

Which is why the Department of Home Affairs’ blatant inability to issue Basotho, who are desperate to escape their country’s poverty, with passports, is not only a national embarrassment, but also tragic. 

In the past year alone, thousands of Basotho have been denied their right to passports and national IDs, by the Department of Home Affairs under the Ministry of Local Government, Chieftainship, Home Affairs and Police. 

Most of them are grounded in the country as they cannot move. Those in jobs already, but who cannot renew their passports, are losing their employment. 

Students are missing out on study opportunities abroad.  Many lives are in grave danger as sick people cannot travel abroad to get medical help, despite the home affairs ministry’s baseless claims that it is able to issue emergency passports.   

Only the Department of Home Affairs itself has the prerogative to decide which passport applications are urgent and which are not. That’s in-itself an unfair situation.  And after it has made that decision, we now know it cannot issue more than 50 passports per day against a demand of thousands. 

The government’s inability to produce IDs and passports has rendered Basotho helpless. 

It is virtually impossible for one to obtain a new bank card, open an account or take a loan, if they do not have an ID and cannot replace a lost one. 

Any government that fails to provide its citizens with these basic documents is a very incompetent one.  Moreso if such a government cannot give cogent reasons for its failures. 

So the Government Assurances Committee (GAC) of the Senate, the upper house of Lesotho’s bicameral parliament, was right to admonish home affairs minister, Lebona Lephema, for misleading it about the passport crisis. 

Apparently, Mr Lephema had misled the GAC that his government was now on top of the passport crisis. But during its tour of the Department of Home Affairs last week, the GAC found the opposite obtaining.  Long queues of frustrated citizens snaked out of the department’s offices. 

Frustrated citizens narrated their ordeals to the committee.   

The committee was angry that it had been lied to by Mr Lephema. 

Mr Lephema had told the Senate committee that delays in issuing passports had been as a result of Nikuv International Projects, the middleman appointed by the Phakalitha Mosisili government years back under dubious circumstances.   

To overcome that, Mr Lephema had told the GAC that government had since severed ties with Nikuv and was now procuring the documents directly from the manufacturer, which he claimed had proved effective.  The passports were now being issued seamlessly; he had told the GAC. 

It turned out that was all hot air with the Acting Director for Passports, Mochesela Ntiisa, telling the committee that the passport situation had in fact gotten worse. 

At least Mr Ntiisa proffered a more scientific and credible explanation to the committee than the lies her boss had told. 

The reason behind the ministry’s inability to issue passports on time or not all, Mr Ntiisa said, was directly tied to cost issues. The government charged far less (M130) than it costs to produce a single passport (500). Moreover, there was a time when the government did not charge the M130 at all because it wanted to encourage an increased uptake of new e-passports as it sought to modernise its National Identity and Civil Registry (NICR).  That had all exacerbated the crisis of course. 

The whole outcome of the committee’s visit portrays Mr Lephema as either lazy, incompetent or both. 

The saddest part is that Mr Lephema does not seem bothered by the situation.  That he would have the temerity to mislead a legislative body is not only worrying, but also ample evidence that he does not take his job seriously, let alone the citizens of this country. 

We hope the GAC will not take this matter lying down and will demand answers from Mr Lephema. He ought to be taken to task.  In more serious jurisdictions, a minister who lies to a committee of the legislature is compelled to fall on his sword. 

Mr Lephema seems oblivious of the simple principle that public office holders are accountable to voters through their representatives in the legislature. 

In any event, his portfolio is too big not only for him, but for any appointee.  

As we have argued before, there is no rational basis of putting four different but all too important state functions – police, home affairs, local government, traditional (chieftainship) issues, in the hands of one person.  

But Prime Minister Sam Matekane does not seem to see the need to dismantle this ministry. Or as others have suggested, he might just be too scared of Mr Lephema to split his ministry into manageable units.  

Apparently, it has been suggested Mr Lephema wants to remain boss of a huge ministry with diametrically opposed functions which he cannot manage. Whatever the reason, it is Basotho who will continue to suffer from all this hubris.